I asked the guard if my kids and I could play on the giant red teeter-totter; or if we were just supposed to look at it. She said we could certainly play on it, but we'd have to round up 10 people to get it to work. So I called out to other people scattered around: Do any of y'all want to try this thing out?

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneJust try not to sing along with Candice Breitz's video installation, which celebrates the music of Bob Marley.

Soon there were 10 of us straddling the little plastic seats, holding onto the handle bars and pumping our legs up and down to get the huge steel contraption to slowly rise and fall. Nine of us sat in a cluster on one side; one person sat all by himself in front of us -- about 20 feet past the fulcrum. We laughed and giggled as we thumped up and down -- most of us were full-grown adults.

Prospect.1 New Orleans at the Contemporary Arts Center

Here's the thing. We weren't at some playground or amusement park; we were on the fourth floor of the Contemporary Arts Center, interacting with a sculpture titled "Leverage" by Mexican artist Pedro Reyes, part of Prospect.1 New Orleans, the city-spanning art exhibit that continues through Jan. 18.

As an art critic, I asked myself if Reyes' piece had to do with economic imbalance or the need for human cooperation or some other serious subject. But mostly, I just had fun.

I'm sure that South African artist Candice Breitz's Bob Marley video sing-along on the second floor also has some sort of social purpose. To most of the world, the late great reggae singer was just another pop star. To the people of Jamaica, he's a cultural hero.

You can see the passion for Marley in the faces of the 30 Jamaicans that Breitz videotaped as they sang along to the songs on the album "Legend." The amateur singers are presented on 30 separate television screens, set up in a Brady Bunch grid. It's a fascinating, joyful, funny experience -- maybe the most irresistible art video I've ever seen. I don't know if you're supposed to, but I sometimes sang along, too -- how could you not? The only downside is trying to get the Marley songs out of your head afterward: "This is my message to you oo oo."

Based on my reading of the exhibit catalog, Korean artist Lee Bul's sculpture was inspired by a "Russian semiotician's idea of polyphonic disclosure" and suggests a "post-natural sensibility." Her "hybridized practice draws upon sources ranging from critical theory to the dystopian dream worlds of speculative fiction and film."

But even if you didn't know that, you would probably love her huge, crazy chandelier made of zillions of clear beads, metal screen and silver Mylar that floats in the sunlit corner of the ground floor gallery like an alien spaceship or a pixie castle. Keeping it company is a big, black, plastic iceberg that looks like something that might wash up after a major oil spill. The berg is a hollow shell. Inside you'll find earphones that make everything echo like Gollum's cave. The chandelier and berg are displayed atop a continuous mirrored floor that lends everything an elegant fun-house effect.

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneStep inside Korean artist Lee Bul's big black iceberg, slip on the headphones and then tap and knock for an artistic experience that is sure to make you smile.

Prospect.1 is not your usual trip to a museum or gallery. You don't just walk around contemplatively petting your chin and keeping your distance from the precious art. Prospect.1 is more of an art carnival, and the CAC is the midway.

It's a place where you can artistically teeter-totter; sing along; pretend to spelunk; climb aboard a full-sized, post-disaster Mardi Gras float; count the army of plastic soldiers and herd of plastic dinosaurs in a strange set of tapestries; take a video visit to an eerie African-American wax museum; and behold a painting so cross-culturally confused that it combines gold leaf, graffiti, kabuki and the New Orleans Saints.

Skylar Fein's memorial to a tragic French Quarter fire serves as the carnival's haunted house -- too intense for the kids. And if you enter the 6-by-9-foot wooden prison cell presented by artist Jackie Sumell and Louisiana State Penitentiary inmae Herman Wallace, ask yourself what it would be like not to exit for the next 34 years -- the length Wallace has served at Angola.

Jennifer Zdon / The Times-PicayuneStep inside a replica of Herman Wallace's cell at Angola in 'The House that Herman Built' exhibit at the Contemporary Arts Center.

This is art as it should be. It's not about finding something to match the couch and the carpet. It's not about wishing you could afford a painting in a gallery. It's not about irreplaceable objects inside of glass cases. This is fantastic art that was specially selected to make our reality even richer. And it's totally free. I'm telling you, don't miss it.

PROSPECT.1 NEW ORLEANS AT THE CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER

What: Visiting the 19 current exhibits at the Contemporary Arts Center, the largest of the Prospect.1 New Orleans venues.